 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody, this is Iran Brook Show. Second week, listen, where's the video? My second week of doing these morning shows every day, so we'll see how it all goes. Today is a news update show, so we're going to go through a few, four, five items in the news usually, typically, and we'll do it relatively quickly. I try to make the show no more than half an hour, 40 minutes max, maybe even shorter on some days, depending on the news cycle, depending what I have to say about the news, and so on. So we're just going to run through the stories and give you my take on them, because I think the lead story is right now in the news. There are going to be some weeks that are going to be pretty dull when it comes to news, and there are going to be some weeks that are going to be super exciting when it comes to the news. We're going to try to even all that out by finding interesting stuff to talk about with all of you. We also, reminder, we have a $250 target for Super Chat. Super Chat is a way you can ask questions. It's also a way you can support the show. There's a button at the bottom there. You can do so just with a question or without either way, but we do try to get to the $250 goal for every show. All right, so let's jump in and get started. I think Yuan is still at the top of my concerns. I think that what we're seeing right now is increased visibility to what's going on in Iran in the American press, in Western press. Finally, it seems like the press has caught up with the situation. The regime is continuing to execute people, protesters who are arrested. They have this tradition, I guess, in the Iranian theocracy to hang their opponents from cranes and to leave them out dead, hanging. So as a warning, I guess, to anybody else that was done over the weekend with a young protester, the Iranians don't seem to care about condemnations or anything like that. They're just plowing ahead. The amazing thing is, and I think this is inspiring, is the Iranian youth are not giving up. That is, the demonstrations continue in spite of the risk of being arrested and being hanged, being murdered, the demonstrations continue. Women and girls throughout Iran are walking around without hijabs, without head covering. This is illegal, and they could be arrested for it, but they're doing it anyway. They're walking around knocking the headware of some of the mullahs, some of the religionists. There is a real sense that people in Iran are just not going to give up. They're not going to just cower before the regime. On the other hand, the regime doesn't seem like it's going to give up. Any kind of weakness that this regime will show, they believe will just embolden the protesters even more and risk real regime change in Iran. So they're sticking tough. We are starting to see conflicts and disagreement among regime personalities. There's a conflict about whether the morality police has been disbanded or hasn't been disbanded. There's a conflict about whether the hijab is going to, the laws against the hijab are going to be sustained or not. And that is not going away. That continues. That conflict between the various elements within the Iranian regime will continue. And we'll see where it all pans out. At the end of the day, I think it's going to be very difficult for this regime to survive, make a prediction that this regime will not survive. I don't know how long it's going to take to bring them down. I don't know if this is the end of it or if it's going to take a year or two or a month or two or whatever. Hard to tell what the dynamics of something like this are and what kind of external spark will be needed to really bring the regime down completely. But I think all the elements in place, the Iranian population, particularly the young, are fed up. They've had it. I mean, I read a story over the weekend of where parents are disowning their children because the parents are still committed to the regime and the children, the children are rebelling against it. Families are being torn apart, but they're not stopping. So this suggests that in spite of social pressure from the elders, the young people are not stopping. They're not giving up. They continue to fight and there's a good chance that they will continue to fight. So all the power to them. And, you know, let's see. Let's see. Let's hope that within the military, within even the Iranian National Guard, at some point the calculus will change to maybe it's not in our best interest to continue to support the regime as it is. Maybe we should start thinking about other options. And only when that happens, I think, will you get the real revolution. Somebody has, with weapons, has to be on the side of the protesters and has to actually push this regime over. But, you know, at this point, I think, I don't think it's reversible. And it's partially the power of individualism, the power of people wanting to be free, the power of them seeing what life is like in the West, whether it's through the Internet, whether it's, and they use VPNs to get around whatever blockage there is, whether it's from traveling. They see what life is elsewhere. And they do not want the life that they have. They also see that the wealthy and the politically connected have their beach homes on the Caspian Sea, where they hold parties, where they know who jobs, where there's alcohol, where there's no respect for the laws. And they're going, why only them? This should be society-wide. So, again, I doubt this is reversible. This will continue, and the longer it continues, the more likely it is that the regime will indeed fall. All right, so that's Situation in Iran. Quick update on the situation in China. So China has significantly lifted, as we said, the restrictions on the zero COVID restrictions. Over the weekend, they did even more of that. There's already a little bit of panic in China around spiking rates of COVID and stress on the hospital systems in China. China does not have the kind of hospital capacity, the modernization, the abilities of the West to deal with pandemics, diseases, and so on. Those of you who believe that COVID was all a hoax or COVID is not a pandemic or so on, you know, we'll see what happens in China in the next few weeks, months. It is, you know, I think it's going to be a lot less than what people who fear the most or fear the worst are expecting primarily because I think these variants are a lot, the variants that currently exist are a lot weaker than past variants. China does have a problem of immunity that people have not really had the virus so they haven't had it and their vaccines are really, really bad and ineffective. There are seven companies in China, seven companies in China right now working on mRNA vaccines, but they don't expect to have a product to market before probably April, maybe even summer, depending on how fast the regulatory agencies in China approve the mRNA vaccines. They refuse to import the Western vaccines, so we will see, we will see. Ian says that China is starting to allow German nationals to get the mRNA vaccines, so German nationals in China get Western mRNA vaccines. That's interesting, interesting that, so I guess they don't want to buy it by the hundreds of millions to enrich Western companies. So it's going to be interesting to watch and to keep track. A lot of worry, a lot of concern I think in health officials in China, but definitely a loosening up of controls is a good thing. And now we'll see how the healthcare system there copes and manages this and we'll see how the Chinese behave. That is they could voluntarily lock themselves up out of a sense of fear. So something to really watch and see is how China deals with the spike in COVID cases and what they do about it. And it'll be interesting to see if China actually manages to develop its own mRNA vaccines and starts vaccinating their own citizens, what impact that has and what effect that has. That's a lot of people getting a lot of vaccines. Just a quick update on crypto. You know, I was at this crypto conference, I was at a crypto conference on Friday, spoke at the crypto conference. There was a lot of talk about what happens now that FTX has collapsed, who's next, what are the issues, how safe is crypto, how safe are the exchanges, how safe are the other businesses. FTX just the beginning or was it the end of the disruption within the crypto space. This was a conference of crypto, committed crypto people, so they tended to be optimistic. They spoke very positively about the largest crypto exchange out there, which is Binance. And you know, one of the big issues is you put your crypto at one of these exchanges, you store it at one of these exchanges so you can use it in order to trade. And then what happens if that exchange that lends your crypto out or does something with the crypto and then when you want to take your crypto out, it's gone, it's no longer there. FTX certainly that was the case. And the idea is that Binance is not like that. Binance is 100% reserved and everything is fine and everything is great. And CZ who is the CEO of Binance is now the hero within the crypto community. It's kind of interesting because Sam Beckman-Fried, the CEO of FTX was the hero of the crypto community just a few weeks ago, just up to a few weeks ago, and then he suddenly, it suddenly all collapsed. Today on Zoo or Hedge, there's an article, it's often hard to tell how informed these articles are, but I think it suggests there might be some issues. With Binance, one of the things that a lot of the crypto exchanges are trying to do and a lot of crypto companies are trying to do is get their accounts audited so that a third party auditor comes in and says, yes, there is actually one-to-one reserves for all the promises they made, their liabilities are indeed covered by assets that they have. Supposedly Binance was audited, but maybe, but by a company called Mizzazz. Mizzazz is like a mid-tier global accounting firm, nothing really big. Mizzazz is known for the fact that it worked for, I guess, Trump and withdrew from, it was the auditor for the Trump companies that were just accused of fraud, not accused, found guilty of fraud. Mizzazz was the accounting firm for them and they withdrew their work from Trump's company and said they no longer stand by the accounting statements. This is part of the whole fraud case. Anyway, they are the ones that Binance contacted to do the so-called audit. What's interesting is in the report, Mizzazz says it performed the work, the work of trying to figure out whether there was actual reserves. Covered. But they say they were requested, they used procedures that Binance asked them to use. It wasn't their procedures, it wasn't necessarily their standards. And they say, quote, we make no representation regarding the appropriateness of the procedures. According to Binance, the so-called audit showed that they're fully reserved and everything is great and everything is fine. But who knows? Who knows? So a lot of back and forth, I think, in the crypto community, what is next? Who's going to fall next? Binance is the largest exchange in the world by far. It was much, much, much bigger than FTX, would have much, much bigger impact on I think the crypto world if there was a problem with Binance. I will say this, which I think is interesting, and I said this in my talk or my interview that I did at the crypto conference on Friday. FTX collapsed, Bitcoin is way down, everything is way, way down. Crypto is just being crushed. And it's had no real economic impact on anything. I mean, I'm sure it's had impact on individuals, but it's not a player in the macroeconomic world. It's not a player in economics. Crypto is a blip. The world economy is somewhere about $100 trillion. Crypto just doesn't register when it loses half a trillion or something like that. It's just not that important. And that's wealth. That's not really economic activity. 100 trillion is GDP, so it's economic activity by one, not a great measure. So it is interesting. I don't know how many of you own crypto. Be careful. Store it on your own drive, on your own flash drive, on your own something. Make sure it's secure. Don't put it on any of these exchanges. Not yet. Give it some time. Let's see if they're properly audited. Let's see if they properly have their reserves. Whatever you have, keep close to you. All right. We are way, way behind on Super Chat today. So remember, in order to keep this going into the future, we need to be able to financially justify it. I put in $250 a show. So let's see if we can make those numbers. Otherwise, it's going to be hard to continue these. All right. Finally, well, not finally. I've got a couple of more stories, but one bigger one is two terrorism-related events, which I think are important. And I think it's really, I mean, it's good. And the first one, which is particularly important, is the fact that the United States is brought into custody in the United States. The bomb maker for the Lockabee bombing that is in 34 years ago, 34 years ago, Libyan terrorist guided probably by Gaddafi himself, certainly by Libyan intelligence, placed a bomb on a Boeing 747. I think they placed it in Malta. The plane then flew to London, but the timer exploded, you know, less than an hour, I think, after leaving London on the way to New York. It exploded over Lockabee, Scotland. It was Pan Am flight 103. 270 people died on that flight, 190 of them Americans. The plane just completely disintegrated and was scattered throughout the Scottish countryside over Lockabee. Abu Agila Masood is going to face criminal charges because he is suspected of being the guy who actually built the bomb, who actually made the bomb that exploded. Again, under instructions from senior people at the Libyan intelligence forces. And, you know, this is good. It's good that terrorists know that we will chase them down. Doesn't matter how many years it'll take. We will find them and we will get them. Masood was in Libya. I think he was being held in a prison in Libya by the Libyan authorities. I think the U.S. probably cut some kind of deal with the Libyans to get him, or maybe they threatened the Libyans and got him over. He's probably also suspected of being responsible for other terrorist attacks against Americans, including the April 5th, 1986 bombing of the Label discotheque in West Berlin, in which two U.S. service members were killed, and 229 people were injured. So he will also potentially face charges for that. The operation to put that bomb on the Lockerbie plane was run by a guy named Abdul Basad Ali Al-Migrahi Masood. Masad Ali Al-Migrahi was later arrested, convicted in Scotland, placed in jail in Scotland in 2001, but was released in 2009 because he had cancer, the poor guy. And he died in Libya in 2012. But I remember when they released him because he had cancer and they didn't want him to die on their jail in the Scottish Wimpy and particularly altruistic I think. It's just horrible, just horrible. So it's good. It's good that they know they're going to be hunted. It's good that they're going to know they're going to be prosecuted. It would be great if this guy sits in jail for the rest of his life and dies in an American jail. It is too bad that Ronald Reagan, after the Lockerbie bombing, didn't kill Gaddafi. Gaddafi didn't, you know, he bombed a tent next to Gaddafi's. I think he killed, maybe killed his wife and one of his wives and children. But Gaddafi himself was not hurt. Gaddafi should have been murdered, should have been killed. After the Lockerbie bombing, it was clear that it was from Libya. It was clear that Gaddafi was involved. It was clear that the Libyan intelligence services. It would be nice if senior people in the Libyan intelligence services back then were captured and also prosecuted, not just the guy who happened to make the bomb but the guy, the people who actually commanded him to make the bomb. So yes, we need a much more thorough, I mean this is somewhat emotionally pleasing but not satisfying to somebody like me who would like to see the people at the top be prosecuted. The people at the top, you know, be, people at the top not suffering the consequence of the options and letting the underlings suffer. So it would be nice to get Gaddafi, Gaddafi was got to ultimately but it would be nice to get him by American hands and it would be nice to kind of crush his entire intelligence services and to make them all held responsible for the killing of over 200 people. Second event on the terrorist front was over the weekend, American commandos killed two ISIS operatives in Syria. I mean this is interesting for a couple of reasons. One is, I thought, I thought Trump took all the troops out of Syria. Didn't he say that? Didn't he say that he was going to take all the troops? I thought he was not responsible for any wars in any, anyway. We still have troops in Syria. We still have troops in Iraq just so nobody is confused about this. There's still a US military presence in both Iraq and in Syria, Syria itself, particularly close to the Syrian-Iraqi border. Over the weekend special forces using two helicopters went in, tried to capture two ISIS senior operatives. They ended up killing them in a firefight and getting out of there. No American wounded or killed, which is really, really good. But ISIS continues to be active. It's a minor player. It's not actually clear what the US is doing, why it's doing this. I mean, it's great that they were killed. I'm all for killing ISIS commanders anywhere and everywhere in the world. But why do we still have a presence in Syria? Why do we have commandos there? Obviously this is a risk to their life to some extent or another. Why are we still in Iraq? And why are we still actively killing these troops on the ground? Why not use drones? But what's the purpose? They talked about, oh, ISIS continues to represent a threat to the security stability of the region. Which region is this? Syria and Iraq? Why do we care? Why is this any of our business? Now, I think it's true that the US needs to learn the lesson of ISIS's rise 10 years ago and never give them the ability to hold territory. But the civil war in Syria right now is kind of taking care of that. The ISIS has its enemies both within the Syrian regime, the Russians, the other different Islamist groups. I'm really glad we're not actively involved in killing ISIS commanders in Afghanistan, for example. ISIS is fighting the Taliban, let the Islamists kill each other. That's much better than putting American lives at risk. And then, of course, the Kurds are the ones that really are killing ISIS. Now, of course, it was Trump that abandoned the Kurds that allowed Ogoan to go in and ultimately negotiate a deal with the Russians about having territory there and keeping the Kurds at bay. And the American troops there have nothing to do with the Kurds. They're not there to protect the Kurds. The American troops there are there because we have troops in 150 different countries and nobody knows how to get them out. And I suppose to get rid of ISIS and maybe it's part of our deal with the Saudis. It doesn't seem like the Saudis give a damn about deals with us. Maybe it's part of a deal with Iraq, but Iraq is anti-American today. So I'm not sure why we're there. I have no idea. Somebody might be able to explain it. I do not know why we have troops there risking their lives. I do not know why we're risking special forces' lives to kill ISIS operatives. Who's interest is to serve? Right now, Ogoan of Turkey is telling the Russians that they have not lived up to their side of the deal in Syria. And Ogoan is threatening to invade Syria and take out the Kurds. This is the betrayal that Trump basically sanctioned that and allowed him and gave him a thumbs up to do it. Ultimately it was the Russians who didn't want him there because the Russians now control Syria. Anyway, complicated stuff. Not clear why we're there. Not clear what we're doing. As usual, America does not have a clear foreign policy agenda. America does not have a clear foreign policy motivations and hasn't had since World War II, certainly hasn't had any conception of foreign policy and principles with neither Trump nor Biden. Alright, final quick story. Let's see. So the new mayor of Los Angeles has been sworn in, Karen Bass. The first thing she did was declare an emergency situation that over homelessness to coordinate with other counties and everything else. She wants to get homeless people into homes. No idea how to do that. There's no real plan. There's just a lot of cliches being thrown around. At the same time, she is advocating for what she calls a 100% clean power. So the city of Los Angeles, I guess, is going to go to solar and wind. Zero emission buildings. I guess they're going to build the buildings to house the homeless with no emissions. That'll be cheap. That'll be cheap. And a zero emission port, which should dramatically increase the cost of goods for all of us since a lot of the goods we get in the United States come in through the part of Los Angeles. So as usual, a lot of bombastic statements about solving the problem of the homeless, but actual policies will do the exact opposite if they are actually any policies. And a real focus on the destructive policies of climate change, which is really at the heart of the agenda of the left. All right. That's the quick rundown of the news. Let's look at some of the super chats we have. We've made a little progress to get to our goal, but not much. Thank you, Darlene. Thank you, Khmetija. Bishchak, Bishchak. Thank you. Let's go to some of the super chat. Colleen, $50. Thank you, Colleen. Colleen is doing her part to get us the $250 and about the rest of you, but Colleen is. All right. Let's see. Colleen says, I love these updates. Now I can avoid almost all news outlets and rely on the objective, intelligent update. Thank you, Colleen. I appreciate that. I'll try to keep these as updated and as objective as possible and useful, as useful as possible. You know, this is an experiment. We'll see how it all plays out. But it is, as I've said before, and Colleen, I think, understands this, it is going to be important to make these self-sustaining in the sense that raising enough money to make them doable, and raising enough money either here or through your multi-contribution. But somehow, if I'm going to spend more time on this, we're going to have to see an increase to revenue. All right, Andrew for $20 says, sorry to be so off topic, but I watched a clip and wanted to get your reaction. An interviewer asked Jordan, an interviewer asked Jordan Peterson, what is the most important to him in life? His response is not being stupid, not making foolish mistakes. Yeah, I mean, I think that's consistent with this kind of view of the world, which is, you know, more pain avoidance than happiness achievement. More not making mistakes than achieving stuff. I mean, one of the things about making mistakes is you're going to make mistakes if you try new things, if you push the envelope, if you're ambitious, if you are not, if you don't settle for just the way things are. If you're trying to achieve more and more, it's more likely the more you push, the more mistakes you're likely to make. So I don't think it's a particular good strategy in life to say, don't make mistakes or don't be stupid. I don't even know what don't be stupid means. And then foolish mistakes, I don't know what to do with foolish mistakes, right? We all, yes, it's good to minimize foolish mistakes, but isn't life about the most important thing in life is about the positive? Achieving great things, achieving one's values, pursuing one's happiness, living a great life by using one's reason and one's rational judgment. Isn't that what's life about? Isn't that the most important thing in life? Why is it, in a sense, avoiding pain or avoiding, not even pain, it's avoiding foolish mistakes. So you're going to really be careful and really, I mean, yeah, I think that's how you, that's how you, that is not good advice for young people. I mean, yeah, avoid foolish mistakes. It's always a good thing, but that is the most important thing in life, bad advice, very unambitious, very subtly, settling. Daniel said, late joining any thoughts on the World Cup semi-finals? Yeah, I mean, exciting, a little disappointing. I thought England played better than France and deserved to be in the semi-finals. I definitely thought Brazil played better than Croatia, but you know, this is football, soccer, anybody can win on any given game, day or any given game. All it takes is one strike that actually gets through. Both England and Brazil seem to attack the goals and didn't get through. I thought Portugal played better than Morocco, and Portugal should have gone up, so I'm not particularly happy with Croatia and Morocco. I mean, imagine a finals, I think a much better finals would have been, or semi-finals would have been, you know, Brazil, Argentina. Wow, that would have been amazing, and with France or England versus Portugal. But I really think, wow, what a Brazil-Argentina game, that would have been phenomenal, that would have been phenomenal. At this point, I didn't think the French played particularly well, so they better get better. Morocco has shown that unless you score goals against it, it can certainly score against you, and we know that France has a defence full of holes. I mean, France made some stupid mistakes. I mean, the only reason England was close was because two penalty kicks, and certainly one of them was completely unnecessary and completely ridiculous. England had a lot of shots on goal. The goalkeeper did well, but the defence, the French defence was very weak. Morocco could score, and has shown that it could score against the French, so that's going to be an interesting game. I think the French will win ultimately, but it's not obvious. And then the same with Croatia, Argentina. I mean, right now I am rooting for Argentina. I think it would be great for Messi to win a World Cup. I think that would be justice given the amazing career he's had. And given the way he's playing in this World Cup, he's playing phenomenally well, so it would be great. So I am rooting for a Argentina-France World Cup, and in that match-up I'm hoping that Argentina wins. But anything could happen, as we've seen so far. I think this is the first semi-final where we've got two Cinderella's that made it into semi-final. Usually there's one, this year it's two. Alright, just to remind you, we're about 140 short of our goal. It would be great if we met it. You know, we should really strive to meet it every time. I know it's going to be hard, but it would be cool. So if there's somebody out there who can do $50 or $100 to get us close to target, that would be terrific. Thanks in advance. Alright, Ryan says, good morning, Iran. I'm deep into yesterday's episode and it is fantastic. Everybody really enjoyed yesterday's episode, so that's great. Thanks for hammering on the Conservatives. I enjoy it, and I will keep doing it. They need a proper morality. I'm glad people enjoyed yesterday's show. I hope as part of that you will share it. You will comment on it. You will press that like button and help promote it because again, we are fighting against an uphill battle against the gods of the algorithm. And whatever YouTube has changed is certainly not helpful towards the Iran book show. So I'm going to make some changes to the channel. We'll regroup things. We'll maybe reload the live shows as regular videos. I don't know. We're going to be working on that in the next few weeks to try to fix this because it is very strange and settling and worrying that we're getting the views are not doing much better, given that they're producing so many additional shows. Alright, thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Colt, for the support. Really appreciate it. Alright, I think this is the last Super Chat question. So if you're interested in helping us get to the $250, now is the time to do it because there's not going to be much. Okay, Bree says the mites that kill honeybees are becoming resistant to the only government-approved treatment for them. The people I listen to are scared they may be a collapse in bee colonies this winter. Interesting. I mean, I remember just a few years ago where there was this panic about bee colonies collapsing and the whole environment of bees. The whole environmental impact of that, the impact on nature and this being a massive problem and a huge issue and so on, it didn't happen. So I'm always a little skeptical. Again, there's a tendency among human beings, us included, to catastrophize things. And I always worry about hearing about catastrophe thing. Now, if the government only approves one treatment against mites, then maybe that is an issue. But you'd think that nature has some way to control these mites. So who are the natural predators? I don't know. You know, I don't know. So let's hope that if this is true that there's a quick technological solution to it and maybe another treatment is discovered all right. So my appeal seems to be working. Jeffrey, thank you for the $20. Vladimir, thank you. I'm not sure what currency that is, but YouTube will convert Colleen with another $50. Thank you. So we are now only $67 away from our goal. But thank you to all and we will end the show. It is 36 minutes in. So it's within my 30 to 40 minute limit on these shows or attempt to limit these shows. So thank you again to all the superchatters. Thank you all for listening. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. Don't forget to like the show after you listen to it. If you like anything that I put out there, the short videos, the long videos, whatever, please share, like, comment. And of course, if you want to see these shows continue and you want to see your own book show continue to grow, then please become a monthly contributor at your own bookshow.com. Patreon is growing slowly. It would be great if we could really accelerate the growth of Patreon. So if you're not yet a Patreon supporter, please become a Patreon supporter. You can also, by the way, become a member here on this. And I think next weekend we will do our first member's only show. So that is coming up. All right, everybody, have a great rest of your week. I'll see you all tomorrow. I think it's going to be at the same time. I think 11 a.m. East time is my target, at least, and that's that will be my intention. All right, bye everybody.